The Mecano Project: Enabling User-Task Automation During Interface Development

Acquisition, Learning, and Demonstration: Automating Tasks for Users

Volume

Papers from the 1996 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

We propose that automation of user tasks can only be properly addressed as a particular problem of adaptation in human-computer interaction. We further claim that to achieve such automation, the ability to define, edit, and infer from models of user interfaces is needed. We introduce The Mecano Project, a modelbased interface development environment that allows precisely such capabilities. Finally, we describe how some traditional approaches to user-task automation, including machine learning techniques and programming by demonstration, can be incorporated into Mecano and have a higher potential of being successful.